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Friday, May 8, 2015

Je Suis Pamela Geller

Unless, of course, you don't want to be.It's up to you.As usual, Robert Spencer nails it:

...instead of rallying to her defense and to that of the freedom of speech, the mainstream media, both on the Left and on the Right, has spent the week excoriating Pamela Geller for daring to “provoke” the poor jihadis, as if the two Muslim gunmen who showed up at our event would have become fiercely patriotic stockbrokers if only we hadn’t shown those cartoons.

It is therefore clear that if, God forbid, anything does happen to Pamela Geller, the talking heads will look soulfully into the cameras and say, Of course we are shocked…Of course we condemn….but…wellllll…she had it coming…she should have submitted to Sharia blasphemy restrictions like the rest of us…

The reality is that if the gunmen were “provoked” by the Muhammad cartoons, they would have been “provoked” by something else. What had the Jews in the Hyper Cacher supermarket in January done to “provoke” the Muslims? They dared to be Jews. What had the people in the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in Australia done to “provoke” the Muslims? Dared to be non-Muslims.

People who say our cartoon contest deliberately tried to provoke a violent reaction are under the apparent delusion that if we abide by Muhammad Atta’s advice to the passengers on his doomed plane on September 11, 2001, all will be well. Atta told the passengers, “Stay quiet and you’ll be OK.”

They weren’t.

...The world rallied to proclaim “Je suis Charlie” after the massacre of Muhammad cartoonists in Paris in January. But when those jihadis targeted our Muhammad cartoon event last Sunday, few were saying “Je suis Pamela Geller.” What’s the difference? The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were reliably Leftist, while Geller is identified with the Right. And now it is clear: the Leftist intelligentsia would rather see the freedom of speech restricted, and Sharia censorship imposed, rather than stand with someone whose opinions they find unacceptable.

That really isn’t any surprise. The Left in America is increasingly authoritarian, intolerant, and opposed to the freedom of speech. Leftist thinkers speak only to each other, dismissing challenges from the Right with ad hominem attacks or ignoring them altogether. It would be easy for those who live in that echo chamber to think of the Garland jihadi gunmen, Ibrahim Simpson and Nadir Soofi, as ideological kin: assassins rather than character assassins, but with the same goal in mind.

Those who understand, however, that the freedom of speech, and free society in general, cannot possibly survive the imposition of censorship to avoid offending a group that reacts with murderous violence to being offended, are indeed saying Je Suis Pamela Geller today. If the free world ever remembers that obeying someone who will kill you if you disobey only reinforces your slavery, it will owe her a debt of gratitude of awesome proportions.